Service Warning: Sony Australia's Official Service Centre (LCE Services)

The follow is a critical evaluation of the after-sales service provided by Sony Australia. Even if you are not in Australia and have not bought any products here, please review the following.

Background
Sony's presence in Australia entails a wide range of electronic offerings as similar to other countries. However, Sony Australia is not able to provide custom ordered notebooks to its customers (like the USA and Japan) and although online ordering is available, it's preferred method of distribution is by other electronic chains and outlets. The most notable being the Sony Central chain of stores owned by Bing Lee. These stores do not openly advertise that they are owned by Bing Lee (a privately owned electronic company chain) and therefore customers may be deceived into thinking Sony Central is operated by Sony Australia.

While Sony Australia may be a direct branch of the Sony Corporation, it does not service, repair or provide after-sales support itself. It is true they have a 1800 customer care hot line, but like many outsourced companies, you are more likely to find the correct answer you are looking for on forums such as this one. Most likely, each state or area has an outsourced service centre. In NSW, greater Sydney, the company handling technical repairs and service is a company called LCE Services located in Lane Cove.

VAIO International Service VOS
Purchasing any Sony VAIO, you are offered the option to pay additional for international warranty. Supposedly this covers you in certain range of countries for free-service and warranty-related repairs should they arise. However, that means using the country's relevant official service centre. Not all branches of Sony in different countries are outsourced. For example, Hong Kong Sony actually runs its own retails stores and provides repairs itself.

Please note, although this international warranty supposedly covers the repairs of the actual computer, it does NOT cover accessories or anything else. That means that if you power supply/adapter is damaged or faulty, The international warranty will not cover this. You will have to bring that faulty item back to the country that you bought it to get a replacement.

Service Quality and Tips
This section covers the quality of service provided by both Sony Central Sydney and LCE services when warranty issues of two VAIO notebooks arose. Though it is decent to give doubt and a margin of chance of these are isolated cases, they are a good indication of what you may expect should the worse occur.

Do Not Send VAIO Notebooks to Sony Central to be Repaired
Unless you have a lot of time to waste or can wait an additional week or so, do not send any VAIO repair products to Sony Central directly. Not only are there unnecessary delays for the store to send your VAIO to the service centre, you can not pick up the VAIO at the service centre after the repairs are complete. This means that you are adding additional time for Sony Central to send the VAIO to the service centre and then having the service centre send it back. In the case, the first VAIO was stupidly taken to Sony Central and was later found out it spent 3 full business days waiting at the store for transfer. Finally sales personnel explain, "that's just how long it takes".

Always Try to Resolve Problems Yourself Before Resorting to Service
Most problems with your company, unless hardware related, should be resolvable through searching the internet for answers. Using forums such as this one is an excellent method to find answers to technical difficulties.

If not, there are two things contacting Sony Australia will do. One, they will read out the manual to you over the phone or Two, they will tell you to send your VAIO to LCE services for inspection and repair. This may be true with alot of other notebook companies too but it is a far cry to the excellent service provided by other companies such as Dell who do onsite services.

Calling LCE services directly does not good either. Frankly, you will not be speaking with their 'technicians' but rather secretaries at the front desk. Case related, both times LCE services were called to do warranty-repairs, nothing could be obtained through talking with them. Their response to you is simply to send in the VAIO and let them find the problem regardless of what you tell them or if you can directly point out the issue.

If You Can't Figure It Out with the Internet, Most Likely They Can't Either
The main problem with delegation of repair services may lie in the goals of financial hording. Each service done is most likely paid by Sony Australia indiscriminately. Therefore, they will most likely not try to repair your product in a reasonable time frame or attempt to repair. Rather they will opt. to completely replace parts (taking additional time to order) then attempt to fix technically.

Subjectively, the service provided by LCE services seem to be completely by repair manual rather than any type of technical competence or expertise. This may explain why they are unable to give any ideas of problem diagnosis over the phone. It's somewhat like a doctor practicing medicine based solely on text-books. Simply, it's not in the manual, it's going to be replaced.

One must question the competency of these technicians and the reason behind Sony Australia's poor choice is choosing them.

My Business Depends on this Machine
The title says it all. Do not in any circumstances solely depend on your VAIO to handle all your computer needs especially if it is a vital business tool. Do not be fooled by the advertised Business Premium tag many of the higher end VAIOs contain. Though the machine may be intended for business use, the time frame of which you can expect repairs to be complete is at least 1 week if not more. Delays are to be expected in all circumstances.

In the case, the use of the VAIO as a vital business tool was communicated both to Sony Central and LCE services. It was simply disregarded.

Communication and Manners
Do not expect a high-grade of customer service.

Frustration is the word that is best associated with the service provided both times.

Firstly, customer representative manners were both appalling for Sony Central and LCE services. This is just not the indifference attitude of the people but overall poor communication demonstrated. Decency needs polite words in dealing with customers already dismayed with faulty products, this however is foreign to both companies listed above. There are no apologies for inconvenience caused but rather aggressive hostile attitudes towards the customer.

Secondly, overall communication is poor. LCE services in particular suffers greatly from this. They may say the repair may take 3 days and promise to contact you after completion. This will most likely never occur. Both times their services were used, I had to contact them after the time indicated. Internal communication between LCE services and Sony Central also seems to be lacking. There is no such thing as "service update".

Conclusion
When considering purchasing VAIOs in Australia, buyer beware. In comparison to other countries, Sony Australia charges anywhere from 1.5x to 2x the price of exact products overseas. If you are traveling overseas, consider purchasing from there.

Example:

Australia
VAIO VGNSZ79GNC
$3,699

Hong Kong
VGN-SZ79GN/C
HK$15,980

Converted via www.xe.com brings this amount to $2,133.

Difference for exactly the same product: $1,566

Rationale may point towards the warranty service provided locally but as you may read above, this is found to be untrue.

Like purchasing any product, research their after-sales service. I can personally say the sales reps at Sony Central were excellent, pre-sale but post-sale, terrible.

BUYER BEWARE

 

Hmm I missed this thread. Thanks for the heads up.

Yeah the current repair process is broken, but I never expected much from Sony Australia in the in start. I buy all my Sony products from overseas and never locally. Still works out cheaper even with the shipping and extra charges, go figure. Somtimes i think Sony Australia likes to treat it customers only as cash cows.

I have dealt with LCE services and found their service is polite but extremely slow. I had to contact them numerous times (they never contact you) but near the end i had the chance to speak to one of their technicians. I am a fairly calm person and it`s possible they had a policy of keeping the technicians off the frontline. With the number of sony products out there it wouldn`t surprise me if they found it difficult to source people locally with the skills needed to do the repairs.

As it stands LCE services seems to be the only officially authorised Sony repair company and i only used them as a last resort. I would probably send my item back overseas to Japan for repair next time as I would probably get a much quicker turnaround even if I had to pay a bit more money.

I use the laptop for personal use so i am not sure what bussiness requirements. That said some of Sony`s products are amazing like the Sony TZ which would be great for travelling professionals. It`s just a shame the serivce support here is so medicore.

 

thanks for the reply. more people need to see this.

 

I don't mean to defend the poor service you seem to have received... but if your business is absolutely 100% reliant on a single laptop, you should probably address that situation even if the laptop has not (yet) developed a fault.

Any hardware is susceptible to failure and relying on a single laptop is probably asking for trouble.

Again, I'll stress that I'm not saying that the service people should ignore your request to prioritise the repair... but maybe you should look to buying a spare laptop in case of emergencies? The cost of even a premium laptop is usually a fraction of the value of the data it contains, at least to most businesses, and buying a cheapie as a backup would seem to be a 'no-brainer'...

Sorry to hear about your experience with Sony Australia and their various outlets and agents.

 

im sure his entire business isnt reliant on a single notebook.. c'mon.

but yes, data should be backed up and a secondary unit should be on hand in case of such failures

 

when spending $3,699 and to buy the top-end 'business' machine from any company. don't you expect a certain level of quality and reliability to match? furthermore it should be backed up with 'business' quality service? not some half-hearted indifference.

no my business isn't dependent on a single machine and the data isn't important. but you cannot put a price on time and frustration dealing with such poor service.